The 179-Year Green Card Wait for Indians Is Queue Math, and Federal Data Show Why the Line Keeps Growing

Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat, is pressing again to end the per-country limits on employment-based green cards, writing on X that a 179-year wait is “the projected wait for Indian green card applicants,” according to the Indo-Asian News Service. The figure comes from an August policy brief by the National Foundation for American Policy, an Arlington, Virginia, research group, and it applies to Indian nationals entering the advanced-degree EB-2 line in 2026. Nobody will literally wait 179 years, but federal data show why serious estimates keep landing above a century.

The State Department’s October 2026 Visa Bulletin, the first of fiscal 2027, shows the gap. An Indian EB-2 applicant can be approved only with a priority date before Nov. 1, 2013. For applicants from every other country except China, the cutoff is Jan. 1, 2025. The Indian workers now reaching the front filed nearly 13 years ago. That matters this fall because DHS is proposing changes to the temporary-visa renewals many of them depend on while they wait.

The line: 1,264,495 people were waiting in the EB-1, EB-2 and EB-3 categories as of December 2025, including estimated spouses and children, according to the NFAP brief, which draws on USCIS data on approved Form I-140 petitions. Indians made up 996,599, or 79 percent.
The Indian EB-2 queue: 731,566 people by NFAP’s estimate, about 87 percent of everyone in EB-2 (a calculation from the brief’s figures).
The annual supply: EB-2 receives 28.6 percent of the 140,000 employment-based green cards, or 40,040. Under the 7 percent per-country rule, an oversubscribed country such as India is held to roughly 2,800 of those in a normal year, and spouses and children count against the total (a calculation from the statutory limits).
The new demand: USCIS approved 36,069 EB-2 petitions for Indian workers in fiscal 2025, about 75,000 people once families are added, by NFAP’s estimate. The line grows far faster than it moves.

How a queue becomes 179 years

The projection is a line length divided by a pace. NFAP’s brief does not state the annual allocation it assumed. Spreading its 731,566-person queue over 179 years works out to about 4,100 green cards a year, more than the roughly 2,800 the per-country rule allows in a normal year. Read strictly against the statute, the projection leans optimistic.

Other factors cut both ways. The estimate leaves out processing time, and the dependent counts are modeled because USCIS publishes data only on principal applicants. Some workers hold more than one approved petition, and people leave the line every year by moving abroad, upgrading to EB-1, marrying a U.S. citizen or dying, which shortens the real wait for those who remain. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, reached a different figure by a different route in 2023, using March 2023 data to estimate 134 years for new Indian applicants across EB-2 and EB-3 combined. Both methods land above a century, which matters more than either exact number.

Ending the caps moves the wait rather than removing it

Gottheimer points to his vote for the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, H.R. 1044, which passed the House 365 to 65 on July 10, 2019, and never became law. Its central idea, allocating employment green cards by priority date rather than by nationality, would not add a single visa. With no country limits at all, clearing the current 1.26 million-person line would take about nine years of every employment-based green card issued, assuming no one else applied, a calculation from the NFAP total and the 140,000 annual limit.

The real question is who waits. Supporters argue that a worker’s wait should depend on when an employer sponsored them, not where they were born. Cato’s 2019 analysis of the House bill showed the cost: it would clear the existing backlog in a little under seven years, but during a three-year transition it would reserve only 10 to 15 percent of green cards for applicants outside India and China, who today face far shorter waits. Any plan to shorten waits for everyone requires Congress to raise the 140,000 ceiling, which has been fixed since 1990.

For people already in line, the practical stakes run through their temporary status. Backlogged workers stay past the six-year H-1B limit through three-year extensions that the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act allows once an I-140 is approved. A DHS proposal published Oct. 14 would end the policy of deferring to earlier approvals on Form I-129 extensions, so each renewal would be reviewed on its own evidence. For an Indian worker with a recent priority date, that could mean many more full reviews before a green card arrives. Comments on the proposal close Nov. 13. The November Visa Bulletin will show whether the Indian EB-2 cutoff moves at all in the new fiscal year.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds a LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Deigo and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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